Hasta La Ideas

Workshops clad in timber batons sit atop this children’s centre outside Paris by French architects SOA.

Surrounded by houses and offices, the two-storey Gavroche centre for children provides an education centre at the heart of a local community.

Playrooms occupy the building’s white-rendered ground floor, including a games library, a water games room and a multipurpose hall that opens out to an enclosed playground.

Upstairs, the box-like timber volumes contain cooking and reading studios, as well as a staff room and another water games rooms.

Glass doors lead out from here onto three separate roof decks, which face west towards a neighbouring park.

We published another interesting community centre in France this year – see our earlier story about a spiralling centre in Lille.

Photography is by Clément Guillaume.

Here’s some more text from SOA:

Gavroche centre for children
Multi care centre for children and games library

The Gavroche centre for children is a cultural and educational facility situated in the heart of the Victor Hugo development. The latter is part of a large urban renewal scheme consisting principally of housing, offices and commercial buildings organised around the Victor Hugo Garden.

The complex triangular plot is located within a heterogeneous built fabric: the park to the West, old town houses to the North and several new 5 storey buildings to the South.

The depth of the site provides the building with three different orientations. The workshops and games rooms are therefore turned towards the garden, most of the spaces benefiting from an unobstructed view out onto greenery.

The entrance space, with its forecourt set back from the street, acts as an urban connection with the rue Arago. The building slots into this complex site, preserving, as much as possible, a certain continuity with the existing urban fabric as well as with the layout of the Victor Hugo Garden.

The children’s centre stands out as a public facility. The scheme demonstrates cultural, educational and civic intentions with a strong social integration objective. The centre is a place for educational leisure, where children and adolescents are able to develop their own individuality through collective games and workshops.

The building’s functional organisation evolves around the central hall, focal point of the centre, entirely open to the public. Firstly, the scheme rests on a plinth consisting of horizontal lines echoing the configuration of the park. This base supports a number of timber boxes, which appear to be light structures with varied panelling, set out in a fragmented way.

The interior layout of the ground floor favours open spaces with maximum transparency, adapted to natural lighting requirements, as well as acoustic conditions. The rigorous organisation of the different entities allows for a great legibility of the various uses, while facilitating the children and visitor’s orientation throughout the building. This is also achieved with the use of a colorimetric language and appropriate signage.

Location: 50 rue arago, Zac Victor Hugo, Saint-Ouen, France
Client: City of Saint-Ouen
Project management: SOA (commissioned architect), Starck (feasibility consultants and economists), GA (acousticians)
Budget: 2.49 m€ht net floor area 851m²
Environmental aspects and performance standards: HQE environmental approach, THPE certification
Contract: full contract
Schedule studies: 40 weeks, site work 70 weeks
Completed: in 2011

Danish architects BIG and Paris studio OFF have won a competition to design a research centre for Sorbonne Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris. 

The tilted glass facade reflects the famous Notre Dame Cathedral and surrounding Parisian skyline down into the surrounding square.

The centre will combine research and business with transparent walls between laboratories and offices, which will be visible from a public staircase leading to the rooftop terrace.

Light will filter to all floors through a central atrium containing informal meeting places.

BIG and OFF won the competition in collaboration with engineers Buro Happold, consultants Michel Forgue and environmental engineer Franck Boutte.

See all our stories about BIG here, more about Paris here and more about mirrors here.

Here are some more details from BIG:

BIG + OFF WIN THE COMPETITION TO DESIGN THE RESEARCH CENTRE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF JUSSIEU IN PARIS

BIG + Paris-based architects OFF, engineers Buro Happold, consultants Michel Forgue and environmental engineer Franck Boutte is the winning team to design the new 15.000 m2 research centre for Sorbonne’s Scientific university Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris.

The new multidisciplinary research centre, Paris PARC, located between Jean Nouvel’s Institut du Monde Arabe and the open green park of the Jussieu Campus will become a significant addition to the campus, strengthening the international appeal and openness of the leading French University for Science and Medicine.

The facility will bring together academic scholars and the busi­ness community, while re-connecting the university physically and visually with the city of Paris. The winning team was honored as the best design among proposals from MVRDV, Lipsky Rollet, Mario Cucinella and Peripherique.

Paris PARC is located in the visual axis of the Notre Dame Cathedral in a dense context of university buildings from different historical periods. BIG proposes a building geometry that adapts to the specific conditions of all adjoining sides, optimized for daylight, views and accessibility.

The three-dimensional envelope retracts from the neighboring facades, opens up towards the square of Institut du Monde Arabe and the park, and folds into a publicly accessible rooftop landscape, resulting in an adapted sculptural building volume situated between the emblematic architectural monuments of the university.

“As a form of urban experiment the Paris PARC is the imprint of the pressures of its urban context. Wedged into a super dense context – in terms of space, public flows and architectural history – the PARC is conceived as a chain of reactions to the various external and internal forces acting upon it. Inflated to allow daylight and air to enter into the heart of the facility, compressed to ensure daylight and views for the neighboring classrooms and dormitories, lifted and decompressed to allow the public to enter from both plaza and park and finally tilted to reflect the spectacular view of the Paris skyline and the Notre Dame to the Parisians.” Bjarke Ingels, Founder, BIG.

A central canyon provides daylight and a visual connection between laboratories and offices. In the atrium a cascade of informal meeting spaces lead to the public rooftop terrace and faculty club.

A public stair to the rooftop offers glimpses into the activities of the laboratories which are divided by transparent walls throughout the building to ensure visual connections between the working spaces.

The upper levels have panoramic views towards the Notre Dame and the skyline of Paris.

“We propose a building that creates the optimum conditions for encounters and exchange among the academics and visitors of Paris PARC.

Like a scientific incubator the new building will provide the physical environment for nurturing growth of cultures and sharing of ideas – through the internal mix of laboratories, research facilities and informal meeting spaces, and through a reunification with the public life of the city.” Andreas Klok Pedersen, Partner-in-Charge, BIG.

The Paris PARC becomes the interface between campus life and city life by reuniting the Jussieu Campus with the city of Paris.

The iconic view of the Notre Dame Cathedral is brought into the daily life of the building through the large panoramic windows while the façade towards the entrance square is slightly tilted, hence, a mirrored image of the Cathedral becomes visible at eyelevel on the square, connecting the building to its iconic location.

PARIS PARC FACTUAL INFORMATION
PROJECT: Paris PARC

TYPE: Competition

CLIENT: UPMC University

SIZE: 15.000 m2

LOCATION: Paris, France

STATUS: 1. Prize

BIG
Partners-in-Charge: Bjarke Ingels, Andreas Klok Pedersen
Project Leader: Daniel Sundlin

Architect: Gabrielle Nadeau
Team: Camille Crepin, Edouard Boisse, Tiina Liisa Juuti, Alexandre Carpentier

OFF
Partners-in-Charge: Manal Rachdi, Tanguy Vermet, Ute Rinnebach

Project Leader: Daniel Colin, Antonio Rovira
Team: Akram Rachdi, Olfa Kamoon

How cool would it be to have the title of “swarm robotics pioneer” on your business card? Rice University’s professor James McLurkin just happens to be one of a handful of people who can stake this claim. He recently shared details of the R-One Robot kit, a low-cost multi-robot systems platform that is, “advanced enough for multirobot research, robust enough for undergraduate and graduate education and cheap enough for K-12 outreach.” The project began shortly after he arrived at Rice in 2009 and came out of his own frustrations of using the same group of robots in his classroom for nearly 8 years. The original group of $2000 robots were in dire need of replacements, but the cost was prohibitive.

McLurkin’s R-One currently costs about $200 and he has plans to open-source the design, “so that schools and researchers can work with it and adapt it to their needs.”

(more…)

Small windows offer glimpses of the straw used to construct this university building in Nottingham, England, by architects Make.

Straw bales from the University of Nottingham‘s farm just 200 metres from the agriculture campus are sandwiched inside the four-storey-high panels of the building’s exterior wall.

Straw is compacted inside these panels, which are covered with a breathable render that allows moisture to escape.

The straw bales are visible from inside the full-height glazed atrium, which provides social areas for staff and students.

Teaching facilities, staff research laboratories and offices are contained elsewhere in the building, which is part of a masterplan of campus buildings by Make  that will also be constructed from rural materials.

Another straw building we’ve featured on Dezeen is a spray-painted straw theatre and you can also see all of our stories about buildings for eduction here.

Photography is by Zander Olsen.

Here is some more information from Make:

The UK’s largest strawbale building

Make Architects has completed work on the largest single strawbale building in the UK.

The completed 3,100 sq m Gateway Building for the University of Nottingham’s agriculture campus at Sutton Bonington has taken one of the most traditional building materials and elevated it into cutting edge sustainable building technology. In an era threatened by global warming, straw is undergoing resurgence on the strength of its superb insulation qualities, its source as a natural, renewable and often local material and its minimal production costs.

At the Gateway Building, it has been applied for the first time as an external cladding system known as a ‘curtain wall’. Here each panel covers all four floors of the building in one prefabricated piece. This quick and cost-effective system is a third of the cost of a typical high end unitised curtain walling system and combined with its environmentally friendly properties holds the potential to place straw in the mainstream of construction practice.

Click above for larger image

Bob Leung, Architect and Partner at Make said: “The straw was grown on the University’s farm just 200m down the road and our sub-contractor, Eurban, set up a ‘flying factory’ on site in order to create the panels there and then. This natural, simple solution provides a fabulous juxtaposition with the high-tech research that actually goes on within the building itself.

Tim Brooksbank, Development Director at the University of Nottingham said: “We had an exacting brief for this new building in terms of its cost and specification and are delighted with the finished building which has provided a state-of-the-art home for the School of Biosciences and the School of Veterinary and Medical Sciences (SVMS).”

Click above for larger image

The Gateway Building houses a combination of laboratories and offices, but despite this has a remarkably low-carbon, low-energy footprint and boasts an ‘Excellent’ BREEAM rating for energy efficiency. The deep straw-filled panels have a low U-value of just 0.135 W/m², which is 60% better than required under current Part L regulations. A CHP plant generates electricity consumed in the building and feeds excess power back into the national grid. In this way, it accounts for a 13% saving in the building’s carbon emissions.

The new building sets the scene for a visionary new campus masterplan, also designed by Make, the primary aim of which was to consolidate and enhance existing facilities on the campus and, in doing so, create an environment conducive to innovation, research and learning.

The building’s crisp form frames the beginning of a future central avenue and serves as a gateway to the Campus. The facades of the building are made up of repetitive narrow vertical elements that echo rows of trees nearby. These are finished in render and separated by exposed timber fins. A modern glazing system is arranged in between the timber elements, creating a rhythm from the contrasting qualities of the facade system.

OMA have completed a new building for the school of architecture at Cornell University in New York.

Top: photograph is by Cornell University

The three-storey Milstein Hall is positioned between the school’s three existing buildings and connects them to one another.

Above: photograph is by Cornell University

Studios are located in a cantilevered top floor, which is encased in glass and supported by an exposed system of zigzagging trusses.

The two levels below are also glazed from floor to ceiling and house a concrete dome where exhibitions and critiques take place.

The rounded exterior of the dome creates the sloping floor of an adjacent 253-seat auditorium, which can be used for lectures, exhibitions or as a boardroom.

Green sedum covers the roof of the building, where 41 skylights provide additional natural light into the studios.

International architecture practice OMA recently opened an exhibition in London documenting their working processes – see images here and watch a series of interviews with Rem Koolhaas and other OMA partners here.

Photography is by Philippe Ruault, apart from where otherwise stated.

Here’s a longer description of the project from OMA:

OMA Milstein Hall

Milstein Hall is the first new building in over 100 years for the renowned College of Architecture, Art and Planning (AAP) at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. The new building is situated between Cornell’s historic Arts Quad and the natural Falls Creek Gorge redefining the entry for the northern end of the campus.

Currently the AAP is housed in four separate buildings, distinct in architectural style and programmatic use but similar in typology. Rather than creating a new free-standing building Milstein Hall is an addition to the AAP buildings creating a unified complex with continuous levels of indoor and outdoor interconnected spaces. Milstein Hall provides 47,000 additional square feet for the AAP, adding much-needed space for studios, gallery space, critique space and a 253-seat auditorium. The additional space enabled a new master plan of the College’s facilities creating extraordinary new spatial relationships between internal programmatic elements.

A large horizontal plate is lifted off the ground and connected to the second levels of the AAP’s Sibley Hall and Rand Hall to provide 25,000 square feet of studio space with panoramic views of the surrounding environment. Enclosed by floor-to-ceiling glass and a green roof with 41 skylights, this “upper plate” cantilevers almost 50 feet over University Avenue to establish a relationship with the Foundry, a third existing AAP facility. The wide-open expanse of the plate — structurally supported by a hybrid truss system — stimulates interaction and allows flexible use over time.

The exposed hybrid trusses were designed to balance structural efficiency at the cantilevers and maintain open circulation within the large open plan. A field of custom designed lights and chilled beams were carefully coordinated with the structural and mechanical systems using normally hidden functional elements to define the ceiling plane. The lighting is programmed by a highly customizable and efficient Lutron control system connected to daylight sensors to maintain constant light levels that balance the daylight with artificial light.

The studio comfort environment is maintained by the ceiling’s chilled beams that provide cooling by utilizing local lake source chilled water, reducing the need for large traditional HVAC mechanical systems. The heating is distributed through the concrete radiant heated slab. The efficient mechanical systems and abundance of natural daylight are possible through the use of high performance insulated glass units with Low-E coating on all the exterior glass walls. The building is expected to receive a Silver LEED certification with the possibility of achieving Gold.

The south-east cantilevered area of the studios is considered a unique space within the upper plate as it is most visible from the pedestrian walkways to and from the Arts Quad beneath as well as the transparency seen from East Avenue that is approximately the same elevation as the studio floor. Given the east and south exposure a specific solution to moderate the daylight was required. OMA looked to Petra Blaisse and her firm, Inside Outside, to design a custom curtain for this prominent corner of the building. The goal was to preserve views out from the studios towards the Arts Quad, maintain natural daylight without the glare and present a striking image at this northeast entry to the Quad. Inside Outside’s concept for this curtain is considered together with the auditorium curtain design using architectural drawings from the Dutch artist/ architect Hans Vredeman de Vries to suggest another space outside of the Milstein Hall. The enlarged perspectival drawings are digitally printed onto white vinyl mesh and perforated with holes along the perspective lines.

The exterior of the upper plate responds with different materials to the performative demands of their position on the building. The 26,000 square foot roof is a sedum covered green roof punctuated by a cluster of northern facing skylights which gradually increase in size towards the darker center of the plate further from the exterior façade. Two different types of sedum create a gradient pattern of dots that transition from articulated small circles near the manmade Arts Quad on the south to a dense, larger pattern of dots towards the natural landscape of the gorge on the north.

The continuous twelve foot high band of glass façade makes the long hours of studio activity transparent to the public. Above and below the glass two simple thin bands of Turkish marble define the extents of the upper plate. The naturally occurring vertical bands of grey and white enrich the exterior with a specific scale and material that is unique and yet unites the different buildings despite the proliferation of architectural styles in this area of campus. The vertical oriented marble veining was significant in achieving the continuous horizontal bands of stone to emphasize the cantilevers and floating nature of the upper plate.

The uniqueness of the naturally striated marble directly influenced 2×4, Inc.’s design of the custom Milstein Hall building ID located on the south cantilever’s east façade. The building name is engraved directly into the full height of the lower fascia marble panels in vertical bands that at once appear to dissolve into the stone yet reveal themselves as a distinct barcode of lettering.

Underneath the upper plate a continuous ceiling of custom stamped perforated aluminum panels extend through both the interior and exterior spaces deemphasizing the boundary between. The enlarged metal panels fabricated on an automotive stamping machine define a scale that is at once perceivable to the traffic passing under the cantilever along University Avenue as well as the pedestrians occupying the spaces below. The vernacular reference to New York stamped metal ceilings creates an urban room-like space below the upper plate surrounded by the existing historic facades of Rand, Sibley and the Foundry. Above the grid of perforated metal panels acoustic blankets tune specific zones such as the road area to absorb noises from passing vehicles, the auditorium to improve audible performance and the covered plaza to reduce noise transmittance to the adjacent offices, classrooms and auditorium.

Beneath the hovering studio plate, the ground level accommodates major program elements including the 253-seat auditorium and a dome that encloses a 5,000 square foot circular critique space. The materiality of the lower level, constructed of exposed cast-in-place concrete, adds a contrast to the upper plate’s glass and steel character. However both spaces create frameworks of raw spaces to serve as a pedagogical platform for the AAP to generate new interaction driven by the students’ and faculty’s ambitions and explorations.

The dome is a double layered concrete system. The exposed underside is a cast-in-place structural slab spanning the main critique space beneath the dome. The dome was formed using two layers of 3/8” plywood with a finish layer of 3/8” MDO board and poured in a single 12 hour period. The strip light pockets were cast into the dome together with the electrical and sprinkler systems forming a clearly defined central space out of a complex construction process. Above the structural dome slab a concrete topping slab forms the exterior surface of the dome. The dome serves multiple functions: it supports the raked auditorium seating, it becomes the stairs leading up to the studio plate above, and it is the artificial ground for an array of exterior seating pods custom fabricated in Brooklyn, NY by Fabrice Covelli of Fproduct Inc.

From the main entry, a concrete bridge spanning 70 feet across the dome space draws people into the auditorium or brings them down the sculptural stairs to the lower level of Milstein Hall. The bridge’s structural concrete truss railing and stair allow the bridge to span across the dome column free.

Connecting the three levels of Milstein Hall a vertical moving room (12’-3” x 6’-4”) serves as the elevator. Large enough to facilitate the transport of models between the studios and the dome critique space it can also accommodate a chair and reading lamp. Custom designed by OMA and fabricated by Global Tardif and Schindler, the moving room, built from standard plywood panels, was fully assembled near Quebec City, dismantled and reassembled on site in Ithaca.

Milstein Hall provides the AAP its first auditorium and large scale lecture hall within its own facilities. The auditorium was designed to provide maximum flexibility to allow a multiplicity of programs and functions to occur. The auditorium is divided into two halves of fixed seats on the raked section of the dome and loose seats on the level section. When the auditorium is not used at its full capacity of 300 people, the lower level can be used for studio critiques and smaller meetings. The fixed and loose seats were custom designed by OMA and developed and manufactured by Martela Oy of Finland. Their unique design reinforces the flexibility of the auditorium as the cantilevered fixed seat backs fold down to form a continuous bench for higher capacity seating. The bench configuration can also be used for exhibition and display, or create a side table out of unoccupied adjacent seat. The simple rectangular form of the loose seats with the seat backs folded flat and grouped together can serve as tables for models display or exhibitions.

The auditorium can further be transformed into the Boardroom for University Trustee meetings. The Boardroom is assembled at the touch of a button which deploys 61 seats by automatically raising them from below the raised floor of the level floor section. OMA custom designed the solution to integrate the Boardroom into the auditorium and was developed and manufactured by Figueras International of Spain. Each of the 61 individual seats can be raised or lowered independently and is integrated with power, an oversized tablet, a storage bin and is attached to a post that allows 360 degree rotation with locking positions every 7.5 degrees.

The glass-enclosed auditorium provides a permeable boundary between academic space and the public. When privacy or blackout is required, a custom designed curtain unfurls from the auditorium balcony in one continuous form. The curtain is digitally printed on both surfaces with a different Hans Vredeman de Vries enlarged perspective print. Prints of classical columns are countered by the modern design of Milstein Hall suggesting a classical landscape on the interior and exterior of the building.

The insertion of Milstein Hall amongst the existing AAP buildings forms a new gateway for the northern end of Cornell’s campus and transforms together with the recently completed addition to the Johnson Arts Museum an underutilized area into a new corridor for the arts, planning and design.

Project Text and Credits

Status: Commission 2006, Ground breaking 2009, completion October 2011
Client: Cornell University, College of Architecture, Art and Planning (AAP)
Location: Ithaca, New York (US)
Site: Northern edge of campus between the Arts Quad and the Gorge, adjacent to three historic campus buildings – Rand Hall, Sibley Hall and the Foundry
Program: 47,000 sq.ft. addition to the College of Architecture, Art and Planning – Studios, Critique spaces, Auditorium, Gallery, Exterior Workspace and Plaza.

Partners-in-Charge: Rem Koolhaas, Shohei Shigematsu
Associate-in-Charge: Ziad Shehab

Team: Jason Long, Michael Smith, Troy Schaum, Charles Berman, Amparo Casani, Noah Shepherd
with Alasdair Graham, Torsten Schroeder, Joshua Beck, Erica Goetz, Margaret Arbanas, Matthew Seidel, Tsuyoshi Nakamoto, Ritchie Yao, Sandy Yum, Konrad Krupinski, Kengo Skorick, Martin Schliefer, Marcin Ganczarski, Tanner Merkeley, Konstantin August, Klaas Kresse, Mathieu De Paepe, Suzanna Waldron, Daphna Glaubert, Beatriz Minguez de Molina, Jesse Seegers, James Davies, Esa Ruskeepaa, Daniel Gerber, Paul Georgeadis, Julianna Gola, Betty Ng, Michael Jefferson, Christine Noblejas

Architect of Record: KHA Architects, LLC
Team: Laurence Burns AIA, Jim Bash AIA, Brandon Beal, Michael Ta, Stephen Heptig AIA, Sharon Giles AIA

Structural Engineer: Robert Silman Associates, P.C.
MEP/FP: Plus Group Consulting Engineers PLLC
Civil Engineer – Site Utilities: GIE Niagara Engineering Inc. P.C. Civil Engineer – Site and Grading: T.G. Miller P.C.
Acoustical Consultant: DHV V.B.
Façade Design and Engineering Consultant: Front, Inc. Lighting Consultant: Tillotson Design Associates, Inc. Landscape Architect: Scape Landscape Architecture PLLC Curtain Design: Inside Outside, Petra Blaisse
Graphic Design: 2×4, Inc.
Audio/Visual Consultant: Acentech
Roofing Consultant: BPD Roof Consulting, Inc.
Elevator Consultant: Persohn/Hahn Associates, Inc. IT/Data/Security Consultant: Archi-Technology
Sustainability Consultant: BVM Engineering

See also:

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OMA/Progress at the Barbican	Maggie’s Gartnavel by OMA	Interviews at OMA/Progress